Abstract
Virtual appliances (VAs) are ready-to-use virtual machine images that are configured for specific purposes in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds. This paper evaluates the integrity of software packages installed on real-world VAs through the use of a software whitelist-based framework. Analysis of 151 Amazon VAs using this framework shows that there is significant variance in the software integrity across VAs and that about 9% of real-world VAs have significant numbers of software packages that contain unknown files, making them potentially untrusted. Virus scanners flagged just half of the VAs in that 9% as malicious, though, demonstrating that virus scanning alone is not sufficient to help users select a trustable VA.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| State | Published - 2013 |
| Event | 20th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2013 - San Diego, United States Duration: Feb 24 2013 → Feb 27 2013 |
Conference
| Conference | 20th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2013 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | San Diego |
| Period | 2/24/13 → 2/27/13 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality